Central City, Colorado, 1865.
Life in mining towns was not easy. Many died untimely and violent deaths – deaths from diseases, from hostile environments, from mining accidents, from crime, and even from broken hearts. Conditions were ripe for creating ghosts, and many mining towns still claim hauntings today. Central City, Colorado, also known as “the richest square mile on earth,” thrived during the gold rush era. To this day, many of its first residents and visitors still roam its buildings, streets, and cemeteries.
A building at the town’s main intersection housed one of these restless spirits on its second floor. In the late 1980s, the second floor of this building served as the annex for the Golden Rose Hotel, with the main building directly across the street.
The hotel replicated earlier days. All furnishings were actual gold rush-era pieces, and to preserve the historical ambiance, there were no telephones in the rooms. Guests would have to walk across the street to the main lobby to talk to hotel personnel. With a ghost living in one of the rooms, guests often made the trip to the main building.
I worked in the hotel in 1990 and 1991 until the building was sold to be turned into a casino. Room 25 seemed to have its problems. Windows would open themselves, which would not have been so hard to rationalize if they had not had to slide up to be opened. Water faucets turned themselves on, clothes and other objects disappeared, and then reappeared on the bed when the occupants got ready to leave. When the haunted room was empty, any guests in rooms on either side would come to the desk to report fights in the room.
Central City, Colorado, circa 1899. Photo by Harry H. Lake.
I remember one guest had reported that items were missing from his room. We assured him that our housekeepers were sincere people, but he did not seem to be convinced until just before check-out; he came in and spoke to me. He told me his belongings had turned up, just as I had indicated they might. He seemed shaken, and I again reassured him that no one on our staff would orchestrate a prank like this. He agreed readily that it was not our staff. It seemed he had already packed and was writing a quick letter to mail on his way to his next destination. When he turned to the bed, his belongings were neatly laid on the foot of the bed. When I remarked that it was doubtful that someone could have snuck in to replace the items without him hearing them, he just laughed. It seems that he had been facing the mirror on the desk in his room while writing, and that no one could have moved anywhere in the vicinity of the bed without him having seen them, and no one had. His missing belongings seem to have just materialized out of thin air.
Several times during my employment with the Golden Rose, guests in rooms next to the haunted room came to me to report fights in the next room. When I calmly smiled and assured them everything was in order, they protested so furiously that I had to walk across to the annex with them and open the door to the room where the “fights” were taking place. It was interesting to see the colors the guests’ faces would turn when I opened the door, revealing that the room was indeed unoccupied and neatly ordered, with nothing out of place or destroyed. Some guests loved it; some insisted on moving to the main building for the rest of their stay.
Central City, Colorado by Kathy Alexander.
When gaming was re-legalized in 1991, they sold the annex and converted it into a casino. I went off to a business partnership running a parking lot, shuttles, and some miscellaneous marketing. Part of this marketing involved doing coupons for some of the casinos. Checking an order one day, I went to Doc Holliday’s Casino, which was in the building that had housed the Golden Rose Annex just months before. It was early morning, and when I entered the office, the secretary was quite frazzled and was sorting a very disordered stack of papers on her desk.
She complained loudly that the “guys” kept forgetting to shut the windows and file cabinet drawers at night, and she faced many mornings with picking up files off the floor and reorganizing them. She was also not pleased with the disappearance of files, which would invariably turn back up on her desk later, but she could never find out who was taking them in the first place. The room the office was in? You guessed it. Doc Holliday’s Casino office was located in none other than the haunted annex room. I was told that the casino was called Doc Holliday’s because it was believed that the ghost of Doc Holliday inhabited the building.
He actually died and was buried in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Whether he has taken up permanent residence in Central City, a town he frequented often during life, will probably always be a mystery. It is no mystery, however, that SOMEONE has decided to take up permanent residence in that room.
This is only one instance of haunting in Central City. For people interested in ghost hunting, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better place to visit. If you talk to residents who have lived in the area for a while, you will find scores of well-known haunted places there, and quite a few lesser-known ones as well.
The Doc Holliday Casino is located past the turnoff to Harvey’s Casino on the corner of
Main Street and Lawrence in Central City, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Central City.com
©2005 Sally Taylor, updated October 2026.
About the Author: Sally Taylor is an avid gem and treasure hunter, explorer, and writer, and the owner of Rockhound Station 1, a global rockhound community website that provides forums, articles, a newsletter, and more. Article Source:Â Ezine Articles (dead link)
Also See:
Colorado – The Centennial State
Reader’s input – Katie H (submitted June 2022)
I just wanted to affirm all the details Sally Taylor wrote about. I also worked at the Golden Rose Hotel. I worked there as a housekeeper from 1985 to 1987. I was usually the only housekeeper, especially in the Winter months. I absolutely loved and appreciated the beautiful rooms and took great pride in keeping them up. However after being by myself many times in the annex-Rooms 21-26 and having so many scary and unexplainable events happen I finally stopped cleaning over there by myself when I could avoid it.
The room she writes about was by far the scariest, and I can remember getting in and out of there as quickly as possible, usually with the hairs on the back of my neck standing up!! It is great to know my suspicions were pretty spot on. Thank you for the article. I only found it because I was talking with a friend about the Teller House Hotel, and then wanted to show a pic of the Golden Rose Hotel. I absolutely loved those two little mining towns (Black Hawk and Central City). I am glad we had already left the area before gambling came in and changed so much of both towns. I lived there from 1982 to 1988.